Tag: t1 diabetic

I guess that’s what was wrong with me yesterday. Maybe? I dunno, but I felt like some cow poo yesterday and pretty much just laid in the bed all day.

How sad IS that, y’all???

Actually, there were some extenuating circumstances. We went riding again Sunday afternoon. It was perfect weather and so we took the opportunity to ride! We had stopped to get some lunch on the way home from church, so we just had to change, check the tires and get our water bottles ready.

I ended up going low by the time we’d gone four miles…all of which were downhill. It wasn’t terribly low: in the sixties, so very manageable. I suspended my pump and “shot a Gu” (the way Tommy phrases using an energy gel (called GU (goo)) always makes me laugh) drank a little water and started off again. By the time we were halfway through what ended up being the entire ride (a little over 13 miles) I was feeling terrible! Just like I couldn’t get any energy even though my sugar had climbed to almost eighty, which is fine for easy riding and I had also taken another Gu by that time with my pump remaining suspended. I just felt plain ol’ crappy! Every time I exerted any extra energy at all, for instance, a tiny bit harder pedaling to go up a slight incline, I felt like I was just gonna pass out. If I did much more than that, I’d actually see stars.

Despite feeling nasty, I actually did better this time. I made it all the way back home, even pedaling up our continuous incline to the house. I think that section has been named “Stairway To Heaven” on Strava. It didn’t dawn on me until I dragged myself out of the bathtub that I was dehydrated!

Remember, I got dehydrated so bad a few weeks ago that my endo recommended going to the hospital for fluids. I was already sick that time so I wasn’t sure how much of the yucky feeling was from dehydration, but I now know that was MOST of the reason! I have never dealt with dehydratioin before in my life! I had no clue it could make you feel like you’re going to die. When I stood up out of the tub water, I felt a little woozy. Not unusual, was my thought, since the water had been as hot as I could stand. But by the time I had dabbed most of the water off (instead of thoroughly drying like normal) and stumbled from the bathroom to the bed, it hit me about the dehydration.

YIKES! According to this, both times I have felt this way, I was already in “significant” or moderate dehydration! If I look at the symptoms under “severe”, I realize what a bad state I was in because I also had the respiratory symptoms of rapid pulse and depressed respiration. Y’all, I had NO CLUE dehydration was so serious! And what the heck?! Looking at the “mild” symptoms, I now know why I have been freezing even when the thermostat says it should be very comfortable in the here.

Did you guys KNOW this stuff?!?!? Wow. I saw one graphic that said when you feel thirsty, you are ALREADY dehydrated. I don’t often feel thirsty and I sure didn’t during the bike ride. It seems my turncoat body just won’t give proper signals in any situation, not just when I’m hypoglycemic!! pththt

Check out this last one about what a small percentage of dehydration can do to your body:

No wonder it was wiping me out completely to exert the least bit of energy! I have GOT to learn to recognize the symptoms before I get to the point that I can barely walk. Honestly, it’s a miracle I even made it up the hills to our house.

I wonder if diabetes makes dehydration worse too? Do any of you know? I mean, I wonder if it effects us “harder” or maybe faster for some reason? More than likely, I have got to feeling SO bad because I was completely unaware of the symptoms. But you know how it is if you have t1d too, most everything seems to affect us in a more extreme way. I just wondered if it was true of dehydration as well?

Anyway, that’s sorta why I didn’t post on Monday like normal. I was wiped all day yesterday too. I slept most of the day, which makes me feel like a crappy human, but whatcha gonna do? I’m thankful to feel better today, but I gotta start making an effort to just drink more water. I feel like I drink a lot of water already, but apparently it’s not enough. I’m hopeful that if I can combat the dehydration, maybe, just maybe, I’ll start to feel better all the way around!!

Hi everyone. I had such big plans for yesterday. We had another awesome sermon that filled me with all sorts of good thoughts and scripture to share with you. If you haven’t checked it out, go watch the latest sermon series from our church or listen to the podcast.

I have to say, I had a really great weekend. We had all our kiddos over Sunday afternoon for a cookout. We haven’t been able to do that in quite awhile. I put off hitting the house, really getting it cleaned up, til way late. I’d been cooking, doing some make-ahead recipes and food prep after all.

Honestly though, I started on the house at midnight! I’m thinking maybe I should always do that because by the time I went to bed at 2:30 am, the house was in better shape than it’s been in awhile.

Granted, I don’t mean the entire house and we have those “unused” rooms that stay hidden from guests. I need to just suck it up and start on them, but boy, those are going to take several days and I haven’t quite got the nerve up yet.

Anyhow, we had a great time and a ton of company. We should’ve known since Tommy said something about taking a long nap after the kids leave. He doesn’t often slow down and if he stops, he usually falls asleep, so it was odd for him to even think about a nap let alone mention it. Me? I am down with a nap anytime and almost any place. I think I could sleep at just about any time of the day or night. ALWAYS tired!!

But nope. Surprisingly, our kids stayed longer than we had expected. They usually have things they need to run off to do or people to meet. Maybe they didn’t have to leave because several of their “peeps” came up to the house! Ha ha! We had about 5 of the kids from Corey’s church come up to the house. Then a guy Tommy had sold a transmission to on eBay came from Ohio to pick that up along with his wife. Someone else showed up in there somewhere but I forget who at the moment. I think when we counted them all up, there were 11 people at our house Sunday! That’s pretty unusual for us too. So anyway, there was no nap taking done on Sunday.

The guys finished up a dreaded part of the Jeep modifications, so they worked a little later than normal and Tommy was wiped by the time he finally came in.

We had that awesome sermon and once again, it tied right in with things we’re discussing and studying in our LIFE group as well. God’s working on us, I believe. Moving us closer to Him, maybe preparing us for something.

Monday morning, like I said, I had big plans and lots of ideas for a blog post. Seems like I normally have a new one for Monday, but I didn’t feel so great when I woke up. My first thought was that it was in spite of the sermon the day before (seriously, go watch it! then you will understand my statement) and I tried to just ignore it. It wasn’t anything in particular, I just didn’t feel good. My initial thought? The devil is trying to thwart my efforts to practice what was taught Sunday! Hmph! That may or may not be, but whatever the case, I was sick. No ifs, ands or buts!

Around 11 am, I decided to test my sugar. I’m almost out of strips and my shipment isn’t due for a few days, so I’m trying to conserve all I can. Anyhow, it was 432!! I about passed out from disbelief! That is of course, way too high. Normally with a blood sugar at this level, I’ll feel queasy and headachey, really lousy, but not much else. I texted Tommy to let him know. I gave a correction bolus with my pump (to “correct” my sugar), grabbed a bottle of water and went to lie down. I downed the water since high blood sugar can dehydrate you and also the water helps flush your system.

By this time, I had a more serious headache, but I was able to fall asleep. About an hour later, I got up, drank another bottle of water, tested 372 so I could see it was going down, but slowly. SO SLOWLY! I gave another correction bolus and went back to bed because I felt SO tired and was a little dizzy when I got up. The headache had gone from highly annoying to alarmingly insidious. I’m serious you guys. I have never had a headache that bad, not even a migraine. Maybe I should clarify and say that I was really aching all over. My arms hurt, sort of throbbing, my head hurt from my shoulders up and a weird, different kind of pain. I was a little concerned but didn’t know what to do. I had grabbed a soft ice pack from the freezer so I slapped that on my head and tried to get comfortable again.

I didn’t sleep as much as I just dozed in and out of sleep. I was hurting really bad. I guess it had been around 30 or 40 minutes when I started to feel sick at my stomach. I eased off the bed and headed to the bathroom. I also needed to pee really bad! It was definitely time for the “flushing” part of all that hydration. I reached into the laundry room right beside our bathroom and grabbed our trusty “puke pan” before I sat down. I don’t get sick often and I hate throwing up as bad as anyone…but I got SO sick. I hadn’t had anything all day besides the one cup of coffee around 8 am and then all that water. And every bit of it came up. After I dry-heaved awhile, each time seeing stars and worrying that I was going to pass out, I was finally able to get up and clean myself up. I texted Tommy to see if he could come home…told him I’d been sick and felt like I was going to pass out. He said yes, he’d leave right then, bless his heart. I dragged myself to the bed and realized I felt a bit better than before, so I called him back and told him not to come. I didn’t feel “passy-outtie” anymore.

DIZZY

Heh.

I drank more water and laid back down and slept pretty hard for about an hour and woke again. Time to test again: 463!! I was FURIOUS! I get mad enough at myself when I’ve done something or forgotten to bolus for a food or miscalculated the amount of carbs in a food, but when I’m giving corrections and ingesting nothing but water and my sugar is still high, I get REALLY angry!! Stupid diabetes!! Why can’t you just sit over there and behave? Why must you torment me this way? ARGH! So, I decided maybe my pump site was no longer absorbing or something and gave an injection of insulin this time. Before I’d got out of bed though, I’d texted Taylor to ask her if she thought it would be okay, with my weird symptoms, to take some Tylenol. I was about to the point of going to the ER just to get relief from the pain of whatever this was. She said she thought it should be fine and she felt I probably had a virus of some sort. I had to agree. My sugar has been well over 400 before without making me feel this horrific. Normally, I’d have been queasy, headache-y and felt generally crappy, but this was off the charts. With such a short-lived high, I shouldn’t have been this sick.

Then again… it seems the D and me, we don’t get along as well as we used to. I mean, I’ve never been really fond of Diabetes, but in the past few years, the symptoms that I’ve come to rely on have started to change. I can no longer be sure that my dry mouth means a high blood sugar or know that I’ll have the shakiness, the cold sweats, the numbness around my mouth or any reliable symptoms of a low blood sugar in time to treat it myself. For decades, I’ve trusted my body to send me those signals to tell me when something’s not just right and now, I feel betrayed because I can no longer depend on getting those signals or that they will even mean what they always have.

Oh well…whatcha gonna do? There’s not much you can do when something like this happens. Learn the new symptoms or realize there won’t be any and make yourself be even more diligent. That’s all I know to do. Thankfully, this time didn’t land me in the hospital. I really should get a small bottle of keto strips, though.

My endo asked if I had ketones and we didn’t know because we had no strips. Like the issue with glucagon, I hate having something like that just expire without me ever needing it. I don’t know if keto strips have gone down any in price, but I’m betting they haven’t. I’ll just hope I can get a very small package that isn’t too expensive. Seriously guys, I DESPISE paying for something that I know I won’t likely use up before the expiration date. Drives me up a wall!

Type 1 Diabetes Sick Day Rules

Bad, bad Geannie. I know. Deal with it. Am I the only one who feels this way? Am I the only one who doesn’t buy seldom-used diabetic supplies because they are not cheap and always end up expiring? Tell me if I am. (but I bet I’m not!) 🙂

What DO you guys do when you’re sick? I usually end up low when I’m really sick like this, so that’s another reason I’m not sure it was the level of my sugar that made me so sick. How do you T1Ds respond to illness? Like the books say or differently? Is it always the same? Have you experienced changes in the way your body reacts to things after 10 or more years of T1D?? I would love to hear!!